Are three bio courses with labs too much?

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SpaceHamsterBoo

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I'll be taking
Genetics with Lab - NOTORIOUSLY hard at our school
Molecular Bio - hard, similar to biochem in nature??
Medical Parasitology - Microbio on steroids

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Usually 1-2 courses with labs are normal. 3 courses with labs might be a little bit too much; however, it heavily depends on your goals. If you are trying to take those required courses now, for example, so that you have more spare time in future semesters to do other things, then it is understandable. You also need to consider your time management, especially when you have heavy ECs on top of these 3 courses.
 
Depends how long the labs are. An hour each...not bad. 3 hours each...no thanks
 
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I'll be taking
Genetics with Lab - NOTORIOUSLY hard at our school
Molecular Bio - hard, similar to biochem in nature??
Medical Parasitology - Microbio on steroids

All of those classes are useless, but since you are a bio major like most premeds, this schedule isn't hard. It's just three classes with labs so it isn't diverse. And you probably want to take those classes anyways.

Your schedule is fine. I've seen far worse (but more relevant) schedules, and yours is doable.

And before a premed flames me for being arrogant, a moderate-level engineering course surpasses the most difficult biology course in difficulty.
 
Depends on how you are with biology and if you're working or not. For me, three bio classes would be okay, but say three chemistry classes would absolutely murder me. Also if you don't have a job, you'll get through them just fine if you're disciplined with your studying.
 
I will give my input. I had a similar situation to you. I took Biochem I (notoriously hard at my school/ the weed out class), Cell Bio (again a weed people out kind of class), and comparative anatomy and physiology (average difficulty at my school).. all in one semester.

I will say that for the two semester before that I had all A's or A-s... the three semesters after, same thing. But THAT semester I ended up with a B+ in all three of those classes, and a B in my non-science class that I was taking.

Looking back, its not like it scarred me, and I dont have horrible nightmares about that semester heh. However, I do remember it being very time consuming. I remember that was a particular semester where I had relationship strain with my significant other because of my commitment to school. I remember pretty much studying a lot...

The reality that I found was that I just could not give each of those notoriously challenging courses the respect that they deserved. But in the end, is a couple of B+'s the end of the world? I doubt it... it worked out ok in my case.

One thing I would support for taking all of these courses is that it actually was very nice to be taking a ton of science classes at the same because of the overlap. I found that while my grades were slightly lower than they would have been if I was taking cushion classes, I found that this was the semester that REALLY made me passionate towards science. A) because thats pretty much all I was doing, it was hard not to start liking some of the stuff and B) (probably the better reason) there was an immense amount of overlap between the courses that overall strengthened my learning. So while I did not have the time necessarily make all of my work PERFECT and get straight A's, I would say the meat of all of the science that I know and still use today was founded on the semester that took these three challenging courses. Things I learned in biochem would spill over to anatomy, and things in anatomy would spill over to cell bio etc. I think while challenging, it is really conducive to learning the material well.

Would I do it again? most likely... I would say if it will make your senior year easier and stuff, then go for it (this was my mindset but I ended up taking on extra hard courses during my senior year anyways haha). But just be aware that you will essentially be committing to 6 classes. A ton of time for each of the 3 lectures, and a ton of time for each of the 3 labs.
 
Do it because you want to take these courses. If not, you should consider moving one of the three courses for another semester/quarter.
 
I've generally found labs take up a disproportionate amount of time for a course, and since you said they are all hard courses to begin with that may be an overly loaded schedule... just my 2 cents.
 
I've generally found labs take up a disproportionate amount of time for a course, and since you said they are all hard courses to begin with that may be an overly loaded schedule... just my 2 cents.
 
Three lab courses during your junior year is pretty typical of a premed. Be thankful that all three overlap as Biology, and use it as a challenge to 'prove your worth' to yourself. There is no undergrad hell like that of the triple-mixed hard science labs (e.g. Calc-based physics, Biochem, and A&P concurrently) on top of a writing intensive humanities course, alongside working a job and doing research.
 
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